Apple is facing a lawsuit from two authors who claim the company used pirated books to train its artificial intelligence model without consent, and they are seeking class action status due to the volume of works allegedly involved. According to Engadget, the complaint says Apple accessed “shadow libraries” of unlicensed copyrighted books through its Applebot web crawler.
Authors allege unauthorized use of copyrighted works
The plaintiffs, Grady Hendrix and Jennifer Roberson, state that their copyrighted books were included in a dataset of pirated works used for AI training. They argue that Apple did not attempt to compensate them for what they describe as contributions to a potentially lucrative venture. The filing asserts that Apple “copied the copyrighted works” to train models whose outputs compete with and dilute the market for those same works, reducing their economic value.
The suit further claims this conduct deprived the authors and a proposed class of control over their work and positioned Apple to achieve significant commercial success through unlawful means. The allegations focus on Applebot’s ability to reach online repositories of unlicensed books, which the complaint characterizes as shadow libraries. The plaintiffs are asking the court to certify the case as a class action.
Case fits broader wave of AI copyright litigation
Context from other disputes and settlements
As noted by Engadget, the Apple lawsuit arrives amid a series of copyright cases targeting generative AI companies. OpenAI faces multiple lawsuits, including from The New York Times and the oldest nonprofit newsroom in the United States. In a notable development, Anthropic, maker of the Claude chatbot, recently agreed to pay $1.5 billion to settle a class action piracy complaint brought by authors who similarly alleged the use of pirated books from online libraries for AI training.
Engadget reports that the Anthropic settlement provides for payments to authors involved in that case, with 500,000 authors reportedly receiving $3,000 per work. The Apple complaint echoes themes seen across these disputes, centering on consent, compensation, and alleged reliance on unlicensed datasets. The outcome of the Apple case could influence how training data sources and author rights are addressed in ongoing and future AI-related litigation.
